As a part of telecommunications network planning and provisioning activity, administrators have to make decisions about configuring resources in a geographical area targeted for change, enhancements or new facilities. The term rehome or rehoming, used as a noun, refers to a network change which involves moving telephone service traffic from one switching center to a different switching center. Likewise, the term rehome or rehoming, used in a verb sense, is referred to as making the network change of moving telephone service traffic from one switching center to a different switching center. For example, traffic on a first trunk between a first switch and a second switch may be rehomed onto a second trunk between the first switch and a third switch.
The need for rehoming may result from switch decommission or failure, network optimization, switch upgrades, new installations, migration such as from an hierarchical network to a flat network, phase out of equipment, or the like. When the network traffic is not balanced properly, switches can become overloaded, calls are blocked (e.g. fast busy signal) and revenue is lost.
Currently, administrators make major network decisions involving rehoming with mostly manual methods using traffic and resource information from different systems. This takes much time. Some systems have fancy Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) but provide little rehoming calculation and functionality. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,270,919, entitled "Network Planning Tool", describes a fancy Graphical User Interface (GUI), but provides little rehoming optimization. Creating a user interface is straightforward. Implementing valuable functionality for the interface is challenging. Minimizing the cost of a rehoming solution while maximizing traffic efficiency is difficult.
In conventional network configuration environments, interfaces to digital switches exist. Operators can reconfigure such digital switches through software applications. Network failure alarms may warrant rehoming. Many restoration methods such as centralized restoration, dynamic restoration and self healing networks restore communications with priority for minimized restoration time. Consequently, such techniques may not achieve the best solution for the entire network.
Thus, rehomes are essential during network planning and growth, network maintenance, and in failure situations. Configuration or reconfiguration often requires rehoming traffic from one switch to an other switch.